Feast of the Holy Family

When people talk about the need for change in the Church today, one of the things that usually comes up is the question of priests getting married. The idea of celibacy is out of tune with the mood of our time and people find it very difficult to understand. It comes up, too, in conversation with priests. Some also find the Church’s position difficult to accept and look forward to the day when this rule – for that’s all it is – will change. Celibacy as a way of life is not without its difficulties, and many priests struggle with it. But what is often forgotten, and what I often remind people of, is that, despite its difficulties, it is, compared to marriage and having a family, an absolute ‘doddle.’ There’s just no comparison. Selfishness is a danger no matter our state in life. There are selfish married people, selfish celibate people, selfish single people and selfish people who live together, but what I invite you to reflect on today is the way in which the challenges of marriage and family life are designed in a very particular way to enable us to grow beyond our natural self centredness and ultimately prepare us to share the life of God himself. And it starts at the very beginning.

The truth is that, adorable as we may be when we are born, we are, at that stage in our lives, totally and absolutely self-centred. For several months we cannot even distinguish between ourselves and the outside world. For the tiny baby the only things that exist are me and my needs. And, of course, that’s understandable, if extremely stressful sometimes to parents attempting to meet those needs so powerfully and noisily expressed by their child. But it cannot go on. Before too long we have to learn that other people too have needs and that, contrary to what we thought, we are not the centre of the universe. And, of course, we learn this first through interacting with other members the family. That’s where we first learn to share and think of others and any child who turns up at school at the age of five without having learned it is an absolute menace.

The next big challenge for both children and parents, of course, is adolescence. By now, the adorable infant is a distant memory as he or she begins the process of being born for a second time. This time the birth is into adulthood and takes much longer than the one into infancy. We don’t have time here to explore the painful nature of this second birth but what it does or can do for parents is draw out off them a depth of loving previously unknown to them. We all love a child, even when it is being its completely self-centred self, but to love a teenager at his or her worst can stretch a person’s love to the very limit and there are times when only a love like God’s love can manage it. And no celibate or single childless person can ever really experience that. But many of you here know exactly what it is like.

Having made its way through adolescence, hopefully causing no permanent damage to ourselves or others, we approach the next stage on our journey. We began life selfish, we learned to share, we became selfish again as we struggled to work out who we were, and now it is time to reach out once more into what, for most people, is marriage or its modern equivalents. This, too, has its risks. I remember when I was ordained nearly forty years ago the danger was people rushing into marriage and children before they had finished finished negotiating their way through adolescence. The result was men in particular who were married for years and had children before it finally dawned on them what it actually meant to be a husband and father. Nowadays, for a whole variety of reasons, people marry much later. And, while, on balance, I believe that is better, the danger is that we become so used to what, for the lack of a better phrase I would call ‘having our own way,’ that the demands of marriage for life and, in particular, children become too great and one of life’s great challenges and great opportunities to learn what it means to love is missed. But time, as it has always done will sort that one out.

The marriage relationship itself, of course, is one of never-ending growth and development drawing the two parties in it into deeper and deeper self-giving: at least that’s the theory. What passes for love in the early stages is not always what it appears. Mixed up with it is a lot of self in the form of need, a lot of subtle and not so subtle using of the other to meet or satisfy our own needs. But as the years pass this can change. Sometimes, sadly, it does not and only God knows how many people are sitting in marriages which, through selfishness, have never become what they were intended to be Some sit there and suffer it while others eventually pick up the courage and walk away. But when marriage works, there is nothing more godly on the face of the earth. To see a couple who have moved from selfishness to otherness is to see human nature at its very best. Sometimes, as when a husband or wife develops a condition like dementia it takes on truly heroic and Christ-like qualities which we can only admire and marvel at. Such men and women have made the great journey from childhood to adulthood. They have learned through hard experience the truth of everything Jesus says about love and are ready now to share the life of God himself.

And in the meantime, the rest of us are on the journey. The road is far from straight and we can still throw two year old tantrums in our forties or behave like adolescents in our sixties. But take time today to reflect on where you are on this great journey. How much of the self-centred baby is still at work in you? Identify the ways in which selfishness continues to influence your life. Identify the way in which life is challenging you to confront and overcome that selfishness, especially within your family circle. Remember your parents, your brothers and sisters, your children, your husband or wife and all those who, by challenging you in all kinds of ways, have drawn you out of yourself, shown you what love is about and so helped prepare you for entry into the Kingdom of God. Be thankful for all of them and ask God on this Feast of the Holy Family to pour out his blessings on every family in this parish.


BIDDING PRAYERS


We pray on this Feast of the Holy Family for married couples everywhere, especially here in this parish. We pray that wherever they are on their life-long journey from self-centredness to other-centredness they will, with God’s help, persevere to the very end and never settle for less than the total commitment they promised to each other on their wedding day………Lord hear us

If you only love those who love you, Jesus says in the Gospel, then you are no different from the pagans. Even they do that. Christian love is about loving the way God loves and this means reaching out to the world beyond the limits of natural human affection to all who are in need. And so we pray that the families of this parish, in the midst of all their own concerns, will always find room in their lives for those who are poor, both at home and abroad, and so be living signs of the kingdom in the midst of the world…………………….…Lord hear us

We pray in a particular way for families who are struggling with the challenge of raising children in today’s society. Many young people don’t even speak the same language as their parents or share the same values, as computers and the internet open up a world unknown to previous generations. And so we ask God to guide us at so that we can not only overcome the challenges of this new situation but grasp the great potential for good contained within it…….Lord hear us

Written nearly two and a half thousand years ago, the Book of Ecclesiasticus tells us that, even if their minds should fail, we should never despise our parents in our health and strength. On the contrary, we should support them in their old age. And so we pray for the millions of people today for whom the care of elderly parents is a very real issue that they will have the wisdom and generosity they need to do what is right………..…Lord hear us

In Matthew’s story of the Flight into Egypt Jesus, Mary and Joseph become refugees in a strange land. Throughout history there have been refugees who, for all kinds of reasons, have had to leave their homes and make a new life for themselves in a foreign country. Many of us here are descendents of such refugees and immigrants. And so we ask God to stir in us a deep empathy for those in the same situation today who find their way to Scotland…..…Lord hear us

We pray finally on this Feast of the Holy Family for those families which, for whatever reason, have broken up. This can cause great pain for those involved and there is plenty of it around these days. And so we hold up before God all who are living with this pain, especially children who are separated from one of their parents or who are forced by circumstances to choose between them……………Lord hear us